Pig Eradication Project - Santa Cruz Island

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2007/aug/29/officials-say-island-is-on-way-to-recovery-after/

Reading this, the biologist in me thinks that someone thought pretty hard about how to do this.

You don't remove the dead pigs, because in doing so you remove all the biomass - nutrients and minerals - that those pigs represent from the island. (You might have drugged them then removed them and replaced their mass... like the projects that spread dead salmon in the woods.) Since you aren't removing them, you use lead-free bullets. They don't say, but I would bet money they also didn't let the teams leave litter on the ground, and that all those fences are gone.

So, yes, some people are upset about the killing of the pigs. I get that, it was probably pretty awful. (And what a job! "Honey, I've got to run up to America for a year. We're hunting pigs. Back in a bit.") But I think the blame mostly lies with those who brought the pigs and boars there in the first place.

(Which is why, by the way, nanotechnology and created life worries me. I've read too much sci-fi about those little buggers evolving and eradicating the wrong things. Are we so sure we're smarter than the fools that introduced rabbits to Australia?)